Prosperity. Happiness Works.

There was an “is it a bird, is it a plane” reaction last week to the launch of Weedle.com, a Dublin-based website which offers to connect people with other people who need their skills.

Speaking to Prosperity’s Digital Ezine, CEO of Weedle.com, Iain MacDonald explained: “You have demand for people with skills and supply of people with skills. Currently there’s no large-scale, simple way of connecting people with skills to the people that need them. We provide a very simple way to connect you with people who need your skill or to find people with the skills you need.”

The obvious question is, isn’t there already LinkedIn? “LinkedIn is a very good way of managing your contacts within a white-collar network environment. Facebook is very good for sharing your thoughts or photographs with friends. What Weedle does is enable you to connect with people who need your skill or find people with the skills you need.”

How Weedle works is business people create a profile, explain what they can do and demonstrate what they can do, by uploading a video for example. Businesses could vary from accountants to babysitters to carpenters.

For those searching for skills on Weedle, the search string is semantically analysed so that a search for a carpenter will also return results for a joiner, for example. Answers are ranked according to an algorithm, so that the person most likely to meet your search need will be ranked at the top. Also taken into account are the content of a profile, the last time the person logged into their account and how quickly they respond to queries.

You don’t have to log in for the aforementioned results. However, people who are logged in will also get results based on whether friends or contacts have used them and thought they were good or they have gone to school/worked with people. “It’s like automatic word-of-mouth,” says MacDonald, “you can see instantly who in your social network has used somebody with the skill you need now.”

It’s not just for sole traders or consultants; whole teams can sign up to it and put their Weedle link in their email signature to help clients become aware that the team does more than what the person they are dealing with does.

Weedle, which currently employs 18, is expected to grow over the coming year along with some future site improvements. “We are launching in beta, so we’re looking for some support from the Irish internet community,” says MacDonald. “It isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. The only way we’re going to make it better is through feedback from real live users.”